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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/24196474">If I loved you any less</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/InfallibleAngel/pseuds/indelibleangel'>indelibleangel (InfallibleAngel)</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>The Magnus Archives (Podcast)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>All according to canon, Canon-Typical Violence, F/F, Light Angst, POV Second Person, You want melancholy? thats the name of the game bby, i stayed up all night to write this in a dazed stupor, i'm obsessed with this pairing</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-05-15</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-05-15</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-03 01:22:40</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,968</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/24196474</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/InfallibleAngel/pseuds/indelibleangel</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Gertrude Robinson is determined to protect the world. Emma Harvey is determined to keep her safe. They'll both do anything to achieve their goals. </p>
<p>A love story.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Agnes Montague/Gertrude Robinson (implied), Emma Harvey &amp; Eric Delano, Emma Harvey &amp; Gertrude Robinson, Gertrude Robinson/Emma Harvey, Mary Keay/Gertrude Robinson (implied)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>20</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>34</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>If I loved you any less</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>so 167 has given me brainworms thank you jonny sims for everything you've ever done for me, personally.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p> </p>
<p> </p>
<p>“If you had to kill me, how would you do it?” you ask, and she shifts closer to you. No one else gets her like this: splayed across the red sheets of your bed taking up too much space and hogging the sheets but so impossibly close you can feel her breath on the tip of your nose. Gertrude Robinson is larger than life; she lives outside her skin, she always takes up too much space, and asks for the world—one you are happy enough to level and lay at her feet.</p>
<p> </p>
<p><em> Civilisations could rise and fall </em> , you think, <em> I would raze them for you. </em>You do not say that aloud because that’s not how this works. She isn’t yours to keep, Gertrude Robinson has a crusade, and like all good crusaders, she doesn’t stray from the path she’s chosen for herself. Whatever part of her you get has to be stolen away, bit by bit, as much as you can grab.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>“Why would I kill you?” she grins; an expression that’s reserved just for you. Agnes gets her soul, Mary gets her hands but you get her smile, one you reach out to trace with the tip of your thumb.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>She bites it, lightly, her teeth pressing down on the fingernail before letting go, her eyes boreing right into yours and you laugh. “The insurance money.”</p>
<p> </p>
<p>“I think your murderer wouldn’t be given insurance money. Sets a bad precedent. Practically contract killing.”</p>
<p> </p>
<p>“We’ll pin it on Fiona then. Say it was a mid-life crisis.” </p>
<p> </p>
<p>Her resulting laughter is a sound you could live in, not wind chimes or bells but something full-bellied and raw. Almost guttural. It’s rather ugly and makes you love her just a bit more for it. These less than perfect human moments that you drink up like you're parched. </p>
<p> </p>
<p>“Officer, I don’t know what happened,” she says blinking exaggeratedly with a bad southern-belle drawl. “She just snapped, and my darlin’ Emma, bless her soul—” She has to stop because both of you are laughing too hard. This is what they all forget about her, that she laughs. </p>
<p> </p>
<p>Her fingers are impossibly gentle as she reaches out and twists a curl of your hair between them. She does it absent-mindedly when deep in thought, playing with your hair, and you suspect it soothes her. She never reaches for you at the archives, there she's the Head Archivist and holds on to the control she has so tightly if she loosened her grip for a moment everything would fall apart. But here she's always touching you—in the kitchen as you make your tea, on the couch as you talk on the phone, in bed as you rest. Physical proof that there’s someone on her side. </p>
<p> </p>
<p>“I’d do it myself,” she murmurs finally, soft enough that you have to strain to hear. “I’d tell you that I was killing you and give you the poison to drink. I’d do it alone.”</p>
<p> </p>
<p>“If you asked I would drink it.” </p>
<p> </p>
<p>“Well, I won’t let death have you. You’re the one thing I’m going to keep.” And that is as much a statement as it is a promise.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>You don’t see yourself as the star of any story, you’re not hunting down monsters like her, striking fear into the hearts of devotees of eldritch terrors, teaching them to be afraid of her instead, but you’re happy just being by her side. Gertrude Robinson has a way of making people feel like the most significant things in her life, and you don’t need anything else if you have her. You’re happy to be the moon reflecting her glorious sunlight.</p>
<p> </p><hr/>
<p><br/>
<br/>
</p>
<p>You met Mary for the first time back when the three of you were still quite young. Eric was beaming as he introduced the both of you and you didn’t like the way she looked at you, her eyes deep and always calculating the worth of who she was faced with. Mary felt too starved, a hungry snarling thing of teeth and claws. You knew she would gobble him up one day, but you didn’t have the heart to tell him. He was happy.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>“So <em> you’re </em> Gertrude’s Emma.” Her voice was cutting, nearly grating and her fingers twisted around yours tightly as she shook your hand. Her skin was freezing to touch. “I’ve heard a lot about you.”</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Back then, the three of you were bright, idealistic and desperate to know everything about a world that had just opened up to you all. A lot of late nights at the archives, researching, piecing things together, figuring out why Angus and his assistants had failed so that the three of you wouldn’t. </p>
<p> </p>
<p>You all ultimately decided it was his ambition that was his downfall, he got in too deep: walked amongst lions in an effort to study them and had unsurprisingly been eaten.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Then Gertrude started scheming her plots on a much larger scale. She was going to keep the world safe and didn’t feel that unquenching, niggling need to know more than what was required for her plans to work. And Mary walked into Eric’s and Gertrude’s lives, as well as the archives. And nothing would be the same ever again.</p>
<p> </p><hr/>
<p><br/>
<br/>
</p>
<p>Gertrude liked people who had a mission. She liked direction, and steadfastness and determination. And while she was smart about her own courses of action, you knew if push came to shove she would be willing to die for it. She’d pay that price and consider it fair and righteous, for what was one person weighed against the world?</p>
<p> </p>
<p>But you weren’t willing to have her pay it. The world had done nothing to deserve her, and while you hadn’t either, at least you knew her value. You wouldn’t let them take her. </p>
<p> </p>
<p>That and there was one other reason. You wanted to know. Curiosity had its steadfast hands around your throat and didn’t let go. An entire world had opened up to you, and you wanted to figure out its mechanisms, test its limits, see how it worked and what made it tick. </p>
<p> </p>
<p>If you could understand the world then you could live in it, know how to navigate it, help Gertrude remain safe and most importantly, alive. </p>
<p> </p>
<p>It wasn’t ambition or hubris—history was full of people bargaining with their gods, so why not bargain with these? Knowing how things worked was the first step in learning how to use them, knowledge was a tool. </p>
<p> </p>
<p>You feel bad at first, of course you do, you aren’t a <em> monster, </em> but Fiona has lived a good, long life and figuring out how she did was the key to slowly unravelling the world. <em> For Gertrude, </em> you tell yourself, as you continue pushing the older woman down the well and observing as she always hops out relatively unharmed.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>This isn't the sick sadistic satisfaction of the avatars deluded enough to believe their gods care about them. This is science, and science doesn't have to be morally right or easy but sometimes things need doing and you have to get your hands dirty. </p>
<p> </p>
<p>A couple of years and the guilt of doing this is gone because she’s just fine, she’s always fine, and you have a barebones structural understanding of the fears and avatars and how they operate but it isn’t concrete. A solid foundation doesn't a house make. Even a tiny detail could be the difference between life and death, plus you’re sort of curious to know what will happen when Fiona goes up against an entity. And she’s fine, she’s always fine. Until she isn’t.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>And then the cobwebs arrive.</p>
<p> </p><hr/>
<p><br/>
<br/>
</p>
<p>“Emma, you’re still mine aren’t you?” She’s never needed audible confirmation before, but Fiona’s death, Eric’s disappearance and all the rituals she’s been stopping have rattled her a bit. No one else gets to see this side of her where for just a moment she can be human instead of an enigma. </p>
<p> </p>
<p>“Always,” you reply, and you almost want to tell her about the spiders that haunt your dreams or the webs that terrorise you—gathering in your hair and never entirely washing out. But you know that above all entities, Gertrude distrusts The Web with its strings puppeteering all it can. </p>
<p> </p>
<p>Her soul is already tied up so tightly with Agnes’ and they’ve never even met but you fear learning this could push her right into the other woman’s arms. Soulmates are a powerful thing, difficult to fight, but you’re already determined to fight the gods so what’s fate added to that? You don’t tell her about Eric for her—every good crusader needs a martyr to inspire them—but you don’t tell her about the spiderwebs for you.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>You kiss her instead and melt into it like a candle faced by the sun. You desperately want her to know that you would never hurt her, that you’re always on her side, you want her to feel it. Your loyalty. The ends you would go for her. By now your bodies are well-played violins in each other’s hands, strung up in a secret symphony for the other to know, twisting vibrations carried along your skin in perfect harmony. </p>
<p> </p>
<p>Does she understand? Surely she has to know by now, that she’s the reason. That you love her. That you’ve always loved her. Through everything, it’s been love. Acolytes don’t have long lives or particularly happy ones, but you imagine that together you both could be happy.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>“Do you regret becoming the archivist?” You ask later and she considers it while playing with your hair as you rest your head on her arm. That action isn’t relaxing anymore, the thought that the thin gossamer will catch in her nimble fingers, reeling her in, is petrifying. You are a walking venus flytrap poised to snap, laid out for her but you haven’t lost your agency yet. You’d die before you hurt her.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>“No. If it wasn’t me it would have to be someone else, and I’d rather have the fate of the world rest in my hands. That way I know it’s safe.” She turns towards you in a motion that should be familiar but somehow isn’t. Or maybe she’s become less familiar. “Do you regret taking up my offer to join?”</p>
<p> </p>
<p>“Not for a single moment. And I never will.” And she nods and that is that.</p>
<p> </p><hr/>
<p> </p>
<p>Sarah is different right from the start, young in a way that you’ve almost forgotten to be, and so very intriguing. So much like Gertrude, she has the experience and fire and brave teeth-clenching determination in her jaw. She makes the perfect person to test the entities on. You’re older now, compared to most avatars you’ve lived a full life, but you’re not dead yet and you want to know what happens.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>That is the beginning of the end.</p>
<p> </p><hr/>
<p><br/>
<br/>
</p>
<p>In the end, you wonder if it’s Agnes. If it’s jealousy or just dumb luck. You’re glad Gertrude isn’t here caught in this inferno where it is becoming startlingly harder to breathe. It hurts and you’re on your bed alone.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>You once asked her, <em> Do you think we’d still know each other in another life? </em> And she said: <em> Yes, I’d find you in every lifetime. </em> </p>
<p> </p>
<p>You regret lying about Sarah but when she asked the truth choked up in your throat until you were trembling from its force. Until you were afraid that she would hate you, that she would find <em> everything </em>, see every dusty, hidden part of you and deem you inherently unworthy of her. All you had ever wanted was to be seen by her but now it was your greatest fear. </p>
<p> </p>
<p>You take in your last few breaths and smile, closing your eyes. You hope it’s Agnes, you hope it’s pre-mediated murder. It means she felt threatened. It means you won.  </p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>if you love gertrude come scream at me on twitter @infallibleangel. Please review if you liked this story!</p></blockquote></div></div>
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